National Defence committee  Thank you. Yes, and again, I agree with my Manitoba colleague in terms of the necessity to bring the military in as a last resort, but really to focus on a civilian response capability. I'm not saying the Red Cross necessarily in all aspects. There are aspects we play in there,

National Defence committee  There are stressors, but I think we've seen it in COVID-19 as well. Canadians want to help. The provinces that opened this up had tens of thousands of offers of Canadians who wanted to lend a hand. You can't organize that after an event; you have to organize that before, and trai

National Defence committee  Very quickly, during COVID was the first time we got standing core funding to maintain a humanitarian workforce. This is $32 million in funding right now for the maintenance of our capacity, which includes some COVID response. This is new reality. It has been extended for a year.

National Defence committee  I can't answer that because we haven't yet worked together to determine what risk level we want to respond to, what events we expect to see and, based on that, what capacity measures we need. For example, it was an extraordinary situation, but we were asked to replace the army in

National Defence committee  Right now, there is very good collaboration among all the organizations in Canada. I don't think that's the challenge. The challenge right now is that events are becoming more severe and more frequent, and that's stretching capacity to the breaking point. What's much more releva

National Defence committee  You're asking the Red Cross training for...? I'm sorry. I'm not following that question.

National Defence committee  You have to remember.... I said that the majority of our responses have increasingly been in Canada in the last few years. The honourable member, in one of my first questions, reminded me of the past. We've deployed in Syria, and in numerous situations of both conflict and natur

National Defence committee  We have some standing capacity that's funded by the government. Some of it is also paid for by our annual donations. We have a regular presence of volunteers and staff who are already in all the provinces. We also have agreements with the provinces and municipalities as well. I

National Defence committee  I have with us our lead counsel. She's quite capable of talking about liability. We responded, as we talked about earlier, to 180 requests for assistance from the provinces during COVID, where we deployed personnel in COVID situations. Amy Avis can maybe talk about about our li

National Defence committee  I didn't hear that part of Mr. Fadden's presentation. I think it's important to take the time to really understand the events of recent years, the response to those events, where the gaps are and whether there is unused capacity in the community because of inadequate preparation

National Defence committee  I don't think we will be if we don't invest more in our standing capacity. That said, I do have to thank the federal government because, after the COVID‑19 pandemic, it invested in more permanent capacity. Investing in capacity is one of the important parts of the conversation.

National Defence committee  In terms of what we've seen in the last year, that's why I've given the example: Is it the appropriate tool, the armed forces, for all these situations? Are there other capabilities on the ground—local capacities—that can be trained for this? Our experience is that there are alwa

National Defence committee  Okay. I'm going to go fast. I think we've raised, to date, $15 million. We're in the process of raising that. We're asking everybody to register with us to look at their needs exactly and to see how we could use that money the most efficiently, again, complementing what the prov

National Defence committee  I'm sorry. If we receive donations, when will they be matched? Is that your question?

National Defence committee  The initial expiry date is 30 days, but I understand that may be prolonged. Presently, it was 30 days from a few days ago. In the next coming weeks all dollars will be matched, and we will share exactly how we will distribute that. Again, the registration is key for us, because